Through the job counselor, a 19-year-old Search student and one who is 20 hold jobs at a worksite on West Roosevelt Road, doing piecework like assembling keychains or cardboard boxes or putting packets of beer nuts into cartons.
They attend school in the mornings, get lunch, then work 2- or 3-hour shifts in the afternoons. For the 10 to 15 hours of work, they usually take home about $50 a week.
At the worksite, Search job coaches work alongside them initially, then check in periodically.
The transition can be continued with Search’s adult vocational program, through which about 40 mentally disabled adults work with non-disabled people. They join the union and participate in all employee activities, interacting at lunch and on breaks. That program is funded in part by a small Department of Mental Health grant, but mostly it pays for itself.
And ultimately, Search’s job counselors and coaches work to have the young people pursue jobs on their own.
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“That is our mission,” Swearingen said.
The school day ended with Baumer in front of the blackboard pulling the children together as a class again and continuing to hammer home her theme of quantity and bar graphs.
On the blackboard, she had placed a chart entitled “Meal Planning.”
She gave the four children a choice: For the ideal dinner, how many would prefer pizza and how many liver?
Instead of allowing them to shout out their answers, she had them put small squares of red construction paper on the chart above the food of their choice.
It took a few minutes before all the squares were up, then Baumer asked, “Which one do people want the most? Which row is bigger?”
Diane shouted, “Six!”
Derrick read the names of the foods on the bottom of the list.
Brandon hastily began to copy the chart.
Eddie had dropped his extra squares and was laboring to pick them up.
Without a sign of impatience, Baumer gave them back the little red squares and started again, beginning the slow, painstaking lesson that was geared only to these four children and will have to be repeated time and time again if they are to grasp the meanings of quantity and preference.
After nearly an hour, Baumer had achieved her daily miracle: Beset by separate handicaps, struggling with unshared challenges, the four were focused as a class on the same blackboard, plumbing the depths of a tough and crucial concept.
As a group, the classmates of this Search schoolroom decided that they had an overwhelming dinner preference.
“Pizza,” said Eddie, with a satisfied smile.
That was last autumn. Over the course of the year, Baumer left to pursue an advanced degree and Sangodeyi’s immigration status expired. They were replaced by another young teacher and aide.
Eddie, Brandon, Derrick and Diane continued to arrive in the little classroom where the back wall is lined with pictures they made by gluing snapshots of themselves onto construction paper and writing their favorite things around them-the Bulls, the movie “Terminator II,” a few top school subjects.
Brandon’s photo shows a handsome, dignified young man who holds up a math assignment. In the margins are scrawled the words he felt about himself.
“My favorite thing is doing work,” he wrote. “I’m happy when I being great. I’m special cause I’m happy my best friend is Eddie. I’m good at my homework. I’m special.”